American War of Independence

C

The French Alliance

The year 1777 marked the turning point of the war in favour of the American cause. France, defeated by Great Britain in 1763, had been sending money and supplies secretly to the colonists since the beginning of the Revolution. The American victory at Saratoga and the fight waged by Washington at Germantown convinced the French that the Americans now had a good chance of winning the war. In February 1778, France recognized the independence of the colonies and signed a treaty of commerce and alliance with the new nation. Thereafter, French support for the United States with arms, clothing, and money was open rather than clandestine, and Washington's great hope for French naval assistance off the American coast would soon be realized. A French fleet commanded by Charles Hector Théodat, comte d'Estaing, sailed for America in April 1778. Warned by admiralty dispatches, Admiral Richard Howe and Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton, who had succeeded General William Howe in command of British troops at Philadelphia, decided on immediate evacuation of that city. They feared that d'Estaing's superior fleet would interrupt their sea communications with New York. Many Loyalists in Philadelphia, like those in Boston, had supposed themselves safe, but now they had to flee. These people, along with the heavy army equipment, were loaded into Admiral Howe's ships and reached New York safely. Clinton evacuated Philadelphia and marched north across New Jersey. He was pursued by Washington, who overtook and attacked him at Monmouth Courthouse on June 28. Washington's troops fought hard but were not victorious and retreated in some confusion.

D'Estaing's French fleet with 12 ships of the line (the battleships of the 18th century) arrived off the mouth of the Delaware on July 8, found the British fleet gone, and reached Sandy Hook on July 14. There the French admiral established contact with Washington's headquarters and planned to attack Admiral Howe's inferior naval force. At the last moment, d'Estaing decided not to risk his heavy ships because of low water on the bar. Instead, he planned to drive the British out of Newport, Rhode Island, but was prevented from doing so by Admiral Howe's skilful tactics and by a gale that scattered both fleets. D'Estaing then went to Boston to refit and sailed for the West Indies on November 4.

VIII

The Changing Character of the War

During 1779, neither the American army nor the British force in New York was strong enough for major operations, but the advantage was the Americans'. Washington had accomplished his primary object: to prevent the British from reconquering the northern colonies by keeping British forces off balance until a well-trained Continental army could be organized to support the militia. The latter could not fight pitched battles by itself, but it did prevent the British from reconquering much American territory. No British army could sustain itself in an armed and hostile countryside except in close contact with its seaborne supplies. At the beginning of 1779, the Americans were no longer fighting alone against Great Britain. Spain had joined France, and Britain faced the prospect of a major European war. Consequently, more and more British naval and military forces would be taken away from the war in America.

IX

The British Campaign in the South

The king's ministers, faced with Burgoyne's surrender, the entry of France into the war, and mounting parliamentary opposition, formulated a new strategy. The government's military proposals envisioned the conquest of the southern colonies, one by one, beginning with Georgia. After establishing a friendly civil government, the British would march northwards, extending their base of operations. Central to this strategy was the active participation of southern Loyalists, who, it was believed, would rise up, help defeat the rebels, and direct the new civil governments. The British turned to this southern strategy on the dubious advice of exiles who exaggerated the number of Loyalist Americans and the ease with which the British could separate the southern colonies from the revolutionary movement. A southern campaign was attractive to British officials because it permitted them to continue military operations with a minimum increase in manpower and, by demonstrating southern Loyalist support, placate parliamentary opposition to the war. On December 29, 1778, the new strategy was implemented when a British seaborne expedition of 3,500 men from New York captured Savannah. They then proceeded to regain control of other settlements in Georgia.

Farther to the west, an American expedition under George Rogers Clark began the new year by capturing the British fort at Vincennes (in what is now the state of Indiana). This success established American power in the entire region north of the Ohio Valley. Later in the year, Washington sent a strong force under General John Sullivan into western New York to destroy the lands and villages of the Iroquois Confederacy. Washington hoped to end the British-instigated raids by Native Americans on border settlements in New York and Pennsylvania. The surprise capture of the British post at Stony Point on the Hudson River by General “Mad Anthony” Wayne in July was followed in August by the capture by Major Henry Lee, of a small British garrison at Paulus Hook on the Jersey shore.

In the south the war was going against the Americans. Congress had sent Major General Benjamin Lincoln to Charleston, South Carolina, to command the Southern Department. On October 9, 1779, he joined with the French forces of d'Estaing in a hastily prepared assault on Savannah, which was beaten off by the British with heavy allied losses. D'Estaing then sailed for France, as his orders from Paris required. Lincoln's army was besieged in Charleston by a British seaborne force of 8,000 men under the command of General Clinton. Lincoln's 3,500-man army was shut up in the city and, in May 1780, was forced to surrender. Clinton thereupon returned to New York, leaving Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, second in command of the king's forces in British North America, with some 7,000 regular and Loyalist troops to complete the conquest of the Carolinas. Although Cornwallis was a more energetic commander than Howe, he still had to face the problem of maintaining British troops in a hostile countryside. He routed an American force under General Gates at Camden, South Carolina, on August 16, but partisan warfare again spread throughout the Carolinas. Two British columns were overwhelmed in the Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7 and at Cowpens on January 17, 1781. In March, Cornwallis fought a bloody but inconclusive battle at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina, against Major General Nathanael Greene, Gates's able successor in the American Southern Department. Short of supplies, Cornwallis then withdrew to Wilmington, North Carolina. Thereafter he moved north into Virginia and fortified a position at Yorktown, on the sea-flanked peninsula thrusting into Chesapeake Bay between the York and Gloucester rivers. Greene, meanwhile, cleared the Carolina backcountry of British forces and shut the remainder up in Charleston. He won no battles, but retained control of the countryside.

In the north, Washington had been greatly encouraged by the arrival (July 1780) in Newport, Rhode Island, of about 6,000 French troops under General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau. The British had taken all their troops out of Newport earlier in the year in order to build up forces for their southern campaign. In September, however, Washington discovered the treachery of Major General Benedict Arnold, who had proposed to surrender the key fortress of West Point to the British. Arnold, warned that his plot had been discovered, escaped to a British warship in the Hudson River.

A

Pressures for Peace

For two years Washington had been working towards a decisive conclusion of the war. An intelligence service led by Benjamin Franklin, one of the American commissioners in Paris, kept him informed of events in Great Britain and France. As a result of these reports, Washington was convinced that British public opinion definitely was turning against continuing the American war. Another British military disaster such as that at Saratoga would bring irresistible pressure on the king and his ministers to make peace and recognize American independence. Washington knew that British armies could not stay in the interior but always had to return to the coast for supplies. He had patiently tried to trap the British army between the American land forces and a superior French fleet off the coast. If this could be done for a sufficient period of time the American forces could compel another massive British surrender. Franklin had impressed the importance on the French ministry of this idea. Fortunately for the Americans, French ministers, eager to avenge the loss of their colonial empire to Great Britain, had laboured to build the French navy to the highest level of efficiency in ships and in training for war.

In September 1779 the fleets and armies of France and Spain attacked the British fortress of Gibraltar. Great Britain could not afford, either strategically or economically, to lose its precious gateway to the Mediterranean. Because Gibraltar could be reinforced and supplied only by sea, its support became the most important responsibility of the British fleet.

The standard British strategic principle in a war with France was to maintain overwhelmingly superior fleets and to blockade the two principal French ports at Brest on the Atlantic and Toulon on the Mediterranean. If a French fleet went to sea, it was relentlessly pursued. In 1781, however, the Royal Navy did not have enough ships of the line to blockade both French ports and at the same time to supply the garrison at Gibraltar, which required continuous fighting to break through the allied fleets off that port. The escape of the French fleet from Toulon in 1778 was one result of British naval weakness. In 1781, when Gibraltar was especially hard pressed, the admiralty had to leave Brest unguarded as well, with the result that 29 French ships of the line under Admiral François Joseph Paul, comte de Grasse, were able to sail from Brest on March 22, bound initially for the West Indies but with orders to be off the American coast in July and August.

Washington learned of the French fleet's departure on May 22 and, with Rochambeau, planned to attack Clinton in New York. In June, French troops were recalled from Newport, Rhode Island, to join Washington's forces. The New York offensive never materialized, however, because Clinton's forces, reinforced by an additional 3,000 German troops, were too strong, and the New England militia failed to come forward in sufficient numbers.

B

Yorktown

On August 14 Washington received word that de Grasse was bringing the French fleet to Chesapeake Bay (See Chesapeake Bay, Battle of). He immediately decided to attack Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. The troops of Washington and Rochambeau marched south, leaving a containing force to watch Clinton in New York. De Grasse's fleet arrived at the Chesapeake capes on August 30, drove off a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves, and established a tight blockade of Cornwallis's army. Some 16,000 American and French troops and Virginia militia, under Washington's command, laid siege to Yorktown. Cornwallis made several attempts to break through allied lines, but on October 19, 1781, he was obliged to surrender.